This invention relates to rain gutter protection devices, and in particular to a device for completely covering a rain gutter to prevent debris, vermin and other material from entering the gutter, while freely allowing rain water to enter.
Homes and other buildings, when having a pitched roof, typically are built with a rain gutter used to collect rain water from the roof and direct that water away from the building structure. Gutters typically are connected to one or more downspouts and the water is then channeled away from the structure as desired.
While gutters serve a useful purpose, in most environments, gutters eventually become clogged with leaves, sticks and other debris, and are inviting locations for bees, birds and other vermin. Whenever the gutter becomes fully or partially blocked, its efficiency is greatly reduced, leading to many problems, including damage to adjacent facia, misdirected water, overflow, and other similar problems.
To prevent collection of material within a gutter and to protect it, various devices have been developed in the past to partially shield gutters. Examples are found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,672,832; 4,404,775; 4,435,925; 4,796,390; 5,016,404 and 5,216,851. While such devices are effective, most of them do not entirely cover a gutter, and since there are typically variations in width between the outward edge of a gutter and the building facia, large gaps can occur, creating just the problems intended to be avoided. Those that do completely cover the gutter are complex caps, such as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,216,851, and due to variations in gutter dimension, are extremely difficult to accurately affix to an existing gutter.
Other devices have been developed to replace gutters with special structures aimed at preventing clogging. Such devices are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,669,950; 4,493,588 and 4,757,649. However, these devices, being specialized structures, are intended to actually replace gutters, and are commensurately more expensive than simply applying a protecting device to an existing gutter or a commercially available gutter.